When Jimmy Woodruff was invited to speak to the Columbus Rotary Club shortly after he took over as director of the Frank P. Phillips YMCA on Feb. 17, he had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to talk about.
Originally scheduled to speak on March 24, Woodruff finally got the chance Tuesday to make his pitch for the Y. But it was under circumstances he could not have imagined two months ago.
Instead of addressing the Rotarians at a luncheon at Lion Hills Center, Woodruff spoke via Zoom broadcast. The script he followed bore little resemblance to what he had initially crafted.
“If you had told me six weeks ago that I would be sitting in the YMCA and it would be closed with most of the lights turned off and would stay that way for five or six weeks, well, I wouldn’t have believed it,” he said. “Our world has been turned upside down.”
Instead of laying out his plans to build on the success of his predecessor, Andy Boyd, Woodruff’s energies are now devoted to a battle of survival: 90 percent of the staff is on furlough. Memberships have been canceled, others have been put on hold.
For now, the Y is hanging in there, but it cannot sustain itself indefinitely.
“If this situation extends through the end of June or into July, well it’s going to be tough,” Woodruff said.
Yet even in the current circumstances, Woodruff maintains a sense of optimism, as do two of his top assistants, Stephanie Gibson and Cynthia Mutch, who joined Woodruff on Zoom to talk about how the Y is adapting during the shutdown.
“When we got the order to close, suddenly we can’t offer our facilities for exercise or anything,” Woodruff said. “What are we going to do? That was the question.”
He said the first order of business was more reflection moving forward, which meant distilling the Y’s mission to its purest form and making plans based on that.
“It was important for us to remember that we connect with people. That’s what we do,” he said. “For the Y, it’s connecting with people both on the physical and spiritual level. We’ve adapted new ways of meeting those needs.”
One of those new approaches has been providing lunches to first responders and others who are directly involved in caring for citizens affected by COVID-19 through its “Lunch With Us” program. Each Wednesday, people can pick up a sack lunch at the Y’s downtown branch. The Y also delivers to fires station, hospitals, police and other agencies.
Next week, the Y will expand the feeding program, thanks to partnerships it has developed with local businesses.
“As this spreads, we have had some individual donors and businesses that have come to us and wanted to partner with us,” said Gibson, the Y’s Christian ministry director. “Next week, we’ll be going into the community and neighborhoods where the food insecurity is higher or serving people who can’t drive. We want to make it more accessible.”
Gibson said the Y’s commitment to providing for the spiritual needs of its members has not waned, but has changed.
“One of the things our members seem to really love was the little basket filled with colored paper by the main entrance,” she said. “We call them spiritual vitamins with Bible verses printed on each one. We also have a chalkboard with the ‘Word of the Day,’ just something to serve as an encouragement.”
Now, those two items have been moved to the Y’s Facebook page.
There is also an addition to its spiritual service.
“We’ve started a daily pray call, Mondays through Fridays from 9 until 9:30 in the morning,” Gibson said. “We’ve already gotten some testimonies from that, people saying, ‘I don’t think I could have gotten through this without that encouragement.'”
The Y’s exercise/fitness mission has gone virtual, something Mutch, the Y’s membership and marketing director, said has led to a renaissance of its long-dormant YouTube channel.
“I’m really excited about that,” Mutch said. “We went from basically being dormant with two old exercise videos posted six years ago, to 14 new videos produced by our instructors. Subscriptions on our YouTube channel are growing. The analytics say views are up 800 percent and watch time is up 900 percent.
“We are growing and developing our skills in making and producing videos,” she added. “We want to continue that even after we’ve opened our doors again.”
Woodruff encouraged members to stick with the Y.
“It looks like, maybe, we’re beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “I’m optimistic that if our members hang in there with us, we’ll come through this.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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